Today, you're going to learn nine voice over
tips that are going to help you record better sounding voice over. Even though these tips are easy to implement,
if you skip just one, it could hurt the quality of your voice over recording, and it could
be preventing you from getting voice over jobs. These are the tips that I suggest most often,
and once you make the fix, your voice over is going to sound better and you're going
to have a better shot at winning some voice over jobs like Katie did. Katie sent met his email and said she was
hired for a voice over job just one day after she made some small changes. By the end of this video, you're going to
know all nine voice over tips that are going to make the biggest impact to your recordings. It's all coming up. Hey, it's Jason with Voice Acting 101 where
you can find videos and guides to help you start and grow a thriving voice over career. Today, I've got nine tips for you that are
going to make the quality of your voice over recording sound incredible. Let's go ahead and jump into tip #1 which
is the to find a quiet place to record. There are sounds and noises from within your
home and also out in the neighborhood that you're probably so used to hearing that you
don't even notice them anymore. Outside noises might be loud neighbors, lawn
mowers, street noise, airplanes or even dogs barking. Then, there are the noises that come from
within your home and that could be your kids playing. It could be the TV blasting in the background
and air conditioner running, or maybe even just a refrigerator humming. Even though you're able to tune them out,
your microphone is not able to. All these noises may end up creeping their
way into your voice over recording. The good news is that most places are quiet
enough to record voice over even if you're interrupted from time to time, it's not that
big of a deal. You can usually work around it. For the inside noise, all you got to do is
walk around, find whatever is making the noise and turn it off. That's a pretty easy fix. But since you don't have much control over
the outside noises, the best thing that you can do would be to set up your studio at the
far end of your house, which gives the most distance between where you're recording and
wherever that outside noise is happening. Or, you can also just record during certain
times of the day when the noise isn't there. If the noise is just too much to handle or
you're being interrupted too often, or if you happen to live next door to a fire station,
then the next best option would be an isolated vocal booth. A vocal booth is built in a way to prevent
sound waves from entering the booth. You can build your own custom booth using
plans that you find online, or you can buy one that's already built from companies like
WhisperRoom or Studio Bricks. These are going to help black out any of the
outside noises that you're dealing with and give you a soundproof setting where you can
record your voice over in peace. These can be pricey though, costing between
$3,000 and $10,000 for a vocal booth. If you just find the quietest space in your
home, that maybe good enough to start with. Now that you've found the quiet place to record,
let's move on to tip #2, which is to record your voice and not the room. Tip #1 was about controlling the noise that
happens outside your room. Tip #2 is about controlling the noise inside
the room. Properly treating your room acoustically may
be the most important thing that you can do to have better sounding voice over. Every room is going to sound and record differently. If you think about how you sound when you're
in the shower versus when you're in a gymnasium, they all sound different. As an example in a normal untreated room,
your voice is going to bounce off the walls, and the ceiling, and the floor and the microphone
is going to pick up that bounce. It's called room reflection and this can be
very distracting and it can also make your voice over sound bad. Luckily, room reflection is pretty easy to
eliminate. The easiest and most cost-effective way is
to just move your set up into a closet where you're surrounded by clothing and that's going
to help reduce that room reflection. I know several voice talents who work from
closets just because it sounds so good. Another option is to buy thick moving blankets
with grommets like this and you can just hang them from the ceiling and create a voice over
tent. If you'd rather just work in an open room,
then your best bet is to just get some acoustic foam panels like I have in my studio here. And you can place them on the walls and that's
going to stop that room reflection as well. Now, one other quick thing to note before
we move on to tip #3 and that is to be careful of the noises that you introduce to the room. For example, if your computer has a fan that
makes noise, it's got to be located outside the room and away from the microphone. Voice over tip #3 is to use a decent mic. Believe it or not, there are a ton of microphone
options out there that you can use. They work very well for voice over but there
are also a few that you absolutely should not use for recording voice over. You don't want to use a webcam microphone,
a zoom or any kind of a handheld device's built-in microphone, your smartphone or a
camera's internal microphone. These mics just aren't good enough. They're not going to pick up the richness
and clarity of your voice like you need in a voice over recording. Now, two of the most popular microphones in
voice over, one would be the one right here. It's the Neumann TLM 103. Also, the Sennheiser MKH-416, but they both
come with a price tag of around a thousand bucks. If those are more than your budget can handle,
no worries, there are a ton of microphone options out there for voice over that are
more affordable. One example would be the MXL VG67, which sounds
surprisingly similar to the Neumann TLM 103, which again is this microphone. But the MXL only costs $80. Check out the description below for a link
to a post where you can hear just how good an $80 microphone sounds. Now, one thing to keep in mind regarding microphones. The more expensive the microphone is, the
more important it becomes that you treat your room properly and this is because the more
expensive microphones tend to pick up everything good and bad. Voice over tip #4 is to keep your distance
from the microphone. Think of the microphone like an ear, the closer
you get to it, the quieter you'll need to speak and the warmer your voice is going to
sound. But if you get too close, you're going to
end up with unwanted noises like plosives and pops and clicks and mouth noises. In general, you want to keep around 6 inches
between your mouth and the microphone, which you can do easily by just stretching out your
pinky to your thumb and that's pretty much 6 inches between your mouth and the microphone. That's the sweet spot. Another way that you can improve the quality
of your voice over is to use a pop filter, and that is voice over tip #5. The purpose of a pop filter is to prevent
plosives. A plosive is when a blast of air hits the
microphone, it makes a loud distracting explosion-like sound. It's most commonly noticed on words that contain
P's and B's. You can avoid plosives easily just by where
you put the microphone. Instead of speaking directly into the microphone,
all the air is going to hit the microphone if you do it that way. If you place the microphone slightly off to
the side, the air is going to go past the microphone and it's not going directly into
the microphone. If you don't want to have to think about it
as much, just grab a pop filter like this one. Put it on your microphone and it makes plosives
almost impossible. Voice over tip #6 is to check your recording
levels before you begin. There's nothing more frustrating than having
to do something over again. That's why it's important that you do a level
check before you start recording your voice over. If you record your voice over too low, it's
just going to be too quiet to hear and you can amplify it in post-production but you're
also going to be amplifying the noise so your voice over won't be as clean as it could be. If you record with a level too high, you could
end up peaking, which means your voice over could end up sounding distorted. Since this is a video of voice over tips on
how you can make incredible sounding voice over, here's how to get the optimal recording
level. Speak into the microphone at a normal volume
while watching the meter in your audio recording software. Adjust the mic level knob on your audio interface
until you peak around -5 decibels. You don't want to see your meter go any higher
than -3 decibels. Number 7 on this list of voice over tips is
to read from a screen and not from paper. By not printing your script on paper, you'll
be helping to save the environment, plus you can make quick changes to your script if you
need to and you don't have to worry about the sound of paper shuffling making its way
into your recording. Just be sure to use a mouse that scrolls silently
so you don't have to worry about the little clicking noise making its way into your recording. Or, if you're working off a laptop or a tablet,
that's even better as you can use your fingers to scroll. Tip #8 is to keep it simple. A lot of people cringe when they hear the
sound of their own voice. They compensate for the, "I can't believe
that's what I really sound like," by messing around with the noise reduction, EQ and compression
settings that they find in their audio editing software to make it closer to what they think
sounds good. Unfortunately, this usually means that they
go overboard. Noise reduction is going to remove some of
the low end frequencies of the noise that you may hear in your voice over, but it's
also going to remove some of the clarity and the quality of your voice. You're better off just following tip #1 and
just finding a quiet space and not using a noise reducer at all. A small amount of processing can add some
rich, warm texture to your voice, but if you overdo it, it can also just ruin your entire
voice over recording. And most clients are going to end up tweaking
the EQ and compression settings once they have the file. You're better off just sending them an untouched
dry file that they can work with. But if you just can't help yourself and you
want to add some kind of processing, it's best to keep it simple. If you're using Adobe Audition, you can add
some simple processing by going to effects, amplitude and compression, hard limiter and
using the preset light limiter to even out the recording. That brings us to the final voice over tip,
which is to save your files in the correct format. Saving your file in the wrong format could
make your voice over end up sounding like an AM radio station. But with options like Monkey's Audio, FLAC
and OGG, it can be confusing. Now, this may look different depending on
which software you use to record and edit, but the values are going to be the same no
matter what you're using. To keep it simple, always record your voice
over with a sample rate of 44.1 or 48 kilohertz. Under channels, just select mono which is
fine for voice over. For bit depth, you want to go with 16 or 24. Either one is going to be fine. Once you've got these set, you can go ahead
and record and the quality is going to sound great. Then, when you go to save your file, the most
common file formats for voice over are MP3, WAV and AIF. If this is for a client, you want to ask what
they prefer. Otherwise, just know that WAV and AIF files
will preserve the high quality recordings but create massive file sizes. MP3 files end up being much smaller in size
and as long as you save out at 192 kilobits per second or higher, you're not going to
notice much difference in quality. There you go, nine voice over tips to help
your voice over sound incredible. If you enjoyed this video, make sure that
you click the button below to subscribe to my channel. Also, head to voiceacting101.com where you'll
find more free voice over guides and resources to help you start and grow a thriving voice
over career. Before you go, I'd love to know what is your
recording space look like? Are you recording from a closet? Are you in a room with foam on the walls,
or do you have a vocal booth? Let me know on the comments below. Then there are the noises that come from within
your home ... Okay. Now, one other quick thing to note before
... Why is it doing that? Try it again.
Its not ground-breaking material:
Anybody ever tried the MXL V67G mentioned in this video?
I was gonna get the Rode NT1-A, but for $68, I may get the MXL instead.
I currently have the AT2020 - which ain't cuttin it.